Cuomo: Ruling out best hope for his own initiative’s success. Photo: Helayne Seidman

Why is Gov. Cuomo hobbling one of his signature initiatives?

Drawing on a core recommendation of his education-reform commission, Cuomo is targeting pre-K education in New York’s worst school districts. He’s moving to create a competitive grant process to set up strong pre-K programs for students in New York’s most troubled areas — New York City, Buffalo and more.

But his proposal prohibits the state’s most innovative public schools, charter schools — which eagerly and successfully serve these very same students in these very same tough communities — from even participating.

It’s not that he’s locking out a set of schools so much as he’s locking out parents who want to choose charters for their children, as well as the beneficiaries of their choice — their kids.

We hope he changes his mind or that the Legislature intervenes.

Here’s why:

* Parents love charter schools and are choosing them for their children. This year, some 75,000 students attend charters statewide, while another 53,000 children are stuck on waiting lists in New York City alone.

* Charter schools are working: Statewide, 84 percent of charters exceeded the average Math proficiency of their local district last year, and 78 percent exceeded the average proficiency in English Language Arts.

* Charters serve the neediest children. More than 90 percent of the 209 charters operating statewide are in high-needs districts — a response to the failure of those districts to adequately serve their students, as well as a loud vote by parents to choose public schools that emphasize school culture, academic accountability and focus on college and career readiness.

Cuomo hasbeen fair to charters. That’swhy this change puzzles charter educators and advocates, including the 1,200 or so who attended our annual Advocacy Day in Albany yesterday.

Locking out charter parents stifles success. After all, these schools are successfully overcoming the very challenges these grants aim to fix.

Rather than close the door on them, we should be expanding access to funding, and letting charters go head-to-head with district schools and each other for the same opportunities.

Charter advocates love Cuomo’s competitive-grant proposals. We’ve long embraced competition and accountability — charters have to produce results or else face closure. We’ve long known that New York can no longer afford its public education system as now structured, and cheer the governor’s call for schools to find ways to educate children more effectively.

Which is why the charter lockout makes no sense. Because district schools are shackled by bureaucratic rules and regulations, they can’t always innovate or find new ways to better educate children within modern cost constraints.

By contrast, charters are built for innovation, creativity and flexibility — with a record of success — that make them prime candidates for a competitive process that rewards the most effective methods. We even agree with Cuomo’s insistence on using data to measure performance; in fact, it’s built into our contracts.

And charters already do more with less — they’re the least-funded component of New York’s public schools, receiving on average 70 percent of what districts get for the same child.

The charter community is on board with the governor’s push for more pre-K and extended learning time, particularly with his focus on high-needs districts. His competitive-grant approach is the right one for fiscally challenged times.

But not when you leave charter-choosing parents and their children out in the cold.

Bill Phillips is the president of the Northeast Charter Schools Network, which represents charter schools in Connecticut and New York.